Hill friction slowing Sandy recovery

Sandy hits the House shores this week, not with the same force as October’s superstorm but carrying plenty of angst still for House Republicans who are divided over the huge costs of the recovery assistance sought for the Northeast.

The bill’s nearly $60.4 billion price tag exceeds the annual budgets for many Cabinet departments, and the soft underbelly remains $16 billion designated for vaguely defined community development block grants. That said, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut generate far more in tax revenue each year than they typically receive from Washington. And the billions to rebuild housing, beaches and transit facilities are investments in a regional economy that is crucial to the nation.

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The House Rules Committee meets Monday evening to consider scores of amendments filed Friday — many by conservatives hoping to throw up roadblocks. Northeast lawmakers are confident they will prevail on the floor Tuesday. But nerves are frayed, and nearly three months after Sandy hit Oct. 29, waiting for Washington is taking its toll on families and businesses trying to calculate if they can afford to rebuild.

“People need certainty,” Laurel Blatchford, executive director of the administration’s Sandy task force, told POLITICO. Even the Statue of Liberty is in line. And the frustration could be heard in the voice of Patrick Foye, executive director of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority, at a recent Senate hearing.

“None of our agencies are talking about a Bridge-to-Nowhere,” said Foye. “We are talking about restoring tunnels and bridges and train stations … which exist and serve tens of millions of passengers a year.”

Yet for Speaker John Boehner, the timing could hardly be worse as the bill presents its own political superstorm.

The Ohio Republican began this month with a majority of House Republicans bucking him on a late night New Year’s Day tax deal with President Barack Obama. Trying to appease the right, Boehner then further complicated his life by abruptly pulling the Sandy aid package from the floor, thereby killing any chance of enactment in the 112th Congress.

The next day, after a public dressing-down by New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, the speaker promised to start anew in the 113th and set aside this Tuesday, Jan. 15, for floor action.

But Rules — which Boehner controls as speaker — must first dictate the debate terms and what amendments will be permitted. Many come from the same rump Republicans threatening to oust Boehner from his speakership. And there’s a very real chance that the speaker will end up in the same box he was in on New Year’s Day: leading a majority that is too divided, too rigid to truly rule in an open up-and-down House debate.